


Data Hearts: Analyzing The Grid's Status as a Sleeping World

by The_Violet_Howler



Series: Kingdom Hearts Analysis [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Analysis, Character Analysis, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Game: Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, Game: Kingdom Hearts II, Gen, Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance Spoilers, Kingdom Hearts II Spoilers, Meta, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Parallels, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Violet_Howler/pseuds/The_Violet_Howler
Summary: Young Xehanort claimed in Dream Drop Distance that The Grid was not a Sleeping World because data cannot dream. So how did The Grid become a Sleeping World?
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: Kingdom Hearts Analysis [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1569805
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Data Hearts: Analyzing The Grid's Status as a Sleeping World

This idea spawned out of a discussion in the Discord server for the Soriku Ultimania, when we discussed the whole “Nobodies don’t age” discourse and came to the same conclusion found on Tumblr, that as evidenced by Ven, the true statement was that bodies without hearts don’t age, so the Nobodies aging between BBS and COM/KH2 was a subtle hint at their ability to develop hearts on their own.

Later on, the conversation shifted towards the nature of data world’s and Young Xehanort’s line about The Grid in Dream Drop Distance that “data does not dream. Cannot dream,” and that The Grid was a real world as opposed to the other sleeping worlds.

However, Young Xehanort shouldn’t be taken at face value. Later in the game Xemnas and Xigbar confirm that Nobodies are actually capable of growing hearts, meaning that any character’s words, particularly those of an incarnation of Xehanort, should not be taken as the literal, objective truth.

If we take Young Xehanort at his word that data cannot dream _under normal circumstances_ , then we should be asking ourselves under what circumstances _would_ data be able to dream?

Let’s think about what the data version of DiZ said at the end of Dream Drop Distance: given enough interaction and connection with another person, anything can grow a heart – a wooden puppet like Pinocchio, Nobodies, even a piece of data like Tron. That last one was already proven with Data-Sora and Data-Riku in Re:Coded.

The logical conclusion of Young Xehanort’s line, then, is that you need a heart in order to dream. Most data, lacking a heart, is not capable of dreaming. So how would The Grid be a sleeping world then? Well, there is one character in that world who does have a heart.

You’ll recall that Tron’s introduction in Kingdom Hearts II establishes him as the custodian of Space Paranoids’ data and all the information compiled in Ansem’s computer system.

Now, does that not sound familiar to a concept we see fleshed out more in Re:coded?

Tron’s role in the backstory of TRON: Legacy was to serve as the protector of The Grid and its data, in a similar fashion to the role that Data-Riku fills in the Jiminy’s Journal datascape. The Grid can fall into darkness and become a sleeping world for much the same reason that Jiminy’s Journal would fall if Data-Riku’s heart was lost.

But…. That does raise a few questions. The Tron we meet in Space Paranoids is explicitly a copy of the original, so why do he and Rinzler have the same heart in DDD? Sora and Data-Sora’s hearts are treated as separate by the narrative. So why are Tron and Rinzler treated as having one singular heart?

And this is where I started thinking deeper.

We assume that Tron was copied from the Encom server _before_ Kevin Flynn converted the data structure from Space Paranoids to The Grid.

But what if that wasn’t the case?

The last we see of Tron at the end of TRON: Legacy is when he’s sinking into the sea of simulation, his circuits reverting to white as he breaks free of CLU’s reprogramming.

Falling into water in Kingdom Hearts is repeatedly used to indicate that a character has symbolically fallen into Darkness. What if the copy of Tron we meet in Kingdom Hearts II was created _after_ the original Tron and his data world fell to darkness?

But how does this explain why Tron and Rinzler share the same heart? Well, think for a second. What other characters have been shown to have a heart shared across different copies of themselves?

At minimum four members of Organization XIII were slowly re-growing new hearts after being reborn as Nobodies, and after their Nobody selves were destroyed and they were recompleted, their original hearts seamlessly merged with their second hearts.

If The Grid fell to darkness because the original Tron lost his heart, and the copy of Tron in Space Paranoids eventually developed a heart of his own, then the reason that Tron and Rinzler are shown having the same heart in Dream Drop Distance is because Tron is functionally the data equivalent of a Nobody. A copy of someone whose heart has been lost to darkness, but one which can grow a replacement heart given sufficient social interaction, and whose new heart will smoothly merge with the original when recompleted.

And what happens in Dream Drop Distance? The original Nobodies are recompleted. Right before Sora goes to The Grid, we see Lea, Dilan, Aeleus, Even, and Ienzo regain their hearts and awaken on the floor of the lab, whole once more. And where do they wake up? Right in front of the computer that grants access to Tron and Space Paranoids. Not to mention, this scene canonically takes place right _before_ Sora’s arrival on The Grid.

Not only that, the emotional climax of Sora’s portion of The Grid comes when Rinzler reaches out his hand to Sora based on the heart that SP!Tron had been growing, the two Trons’ hearts merging in that moment, recompleting Tron as Sora seals the sleeping Keyhole to release his heart from the nightmare.

In Summary:

The Tron we meet in Kingdom Hearts II is a parallel of the Nobodies. He began to grow a new heart as a result of his interaction with Sora, Donald, and Goofy, but he could not be fully recompleted because his original heart was still trapped among the sleeping worlds. The story of The Grid in Dream Drop Distance was about freeing the original Tron’s heart from its nightmare so that Tron could be recompleted, as a thematic parallel to how the founding Nobodies of Organization XIII were restored as complete people just before Sora’s arrival on The Grid. The Grid’s status as a Sleeping World is because Tron’s original heart had been lost to darkness and trapped in an endlessly repeating dream of the events leading up to the loss of his heart. 


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